Alexander Pushkin

Poet, writer, founder of modern Russian literature and literary Russian. Great-grandson of Abram Hannibal (1696–1781), an African slave adopted by Peter the Great (1704). Born in Moscow (1799) in the family of Sergei Pushkin (1767–1848) and Nadezhda Hannibal (1775–1836). Graduated from the Imperial Lyceum at Tsarskoe Selo (1817). Worked for the College of Foreign Affairs in St Petersburg. Transferred to Ekaterinoslav, Caucasus, Crimea, Chi?in?u and Odessa (1820–24) and exiled to the family estate of Mikhailovskoe in Pskov Province (1824–26). Lived in St Petersburg (1826–28) and Moscow (1828–31), where he married Natalia Goncharova (1831). Returned to St Petersburg and lived at 12 River Moika Embankment, where his wife gave birth to his daughter Maria (1832), son Alexander (1833), son Grigory (1835) and daughter Natalia (1836). Addressed the theme of St Petersburg in such works as The Bronze Horseman (1833) and The Queen of Spades (1834). Mortally wounded in a duel at the Black River with Georges d’Anthès, a Frenchman adopted by the Dutch ambassador, Baron Jacob van Heeckeren (1837). Died two days later at his apartment in St Petersburg and buried at the Dormition Monastery of Svyatogorsk in the Pushkin Hills (1837).